For Whom the Bell Tolls

Its patience at an end, Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. marched into a Topeka, Kans. courtroom last week and got a temporary injunction to stop an old trick that was costing it money. The trick is the uncompleted long-distance call, by which subscribers get their message across via a prearranged code and hang up without paying a dime. Like Illinois Bell Telephone Co., which estimated its losses at $400,000 annually (TIME, April 16), Southwestern Bell was losing heavily.

One of the guilty parties, charged Southwestern Bell, was King Van Lines, Inc. a big Wichita trucking outfit operating from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The evidence: a photostatic copy of a King interoffice memo which Bell's lawyers got from a disgruntled trucker that proved King was working a switch on the old "collect call" routine. Said the memo from King's vice president John Kelso: "I know the method, I think, where we can save 30.89% immediately on our phone calls. Coupled with one or two other ideas we should be able to cut our communications bill by 50%." The memo went on to outline a complicated "initial" code. Trucker John Doe, for example, would call the home office collect from Phoenix, Ariz., give his real last name and tack on fake initials, saying that "E. K. Doe is calling." The King dispatcher would thus know it was Doe, that he had reached Phoenix, and from the initials E. K., that his truck was empty. Then, naturally, the dispatcher would refuse to accept the call.

Since the memo went on to outline other coded initial messages (L for loaded, H for half loaded, R for three-quarters loaded, etc.), and since Bell records showed a large number of collect calls refused by King, the phone company thought it had a good case, will ask the court for a permanent injunction and $6,000 damages. If it wins the case, the first such court test, Southwestern Bell hopes it will serve as an expensive example to other toll cheaters. Said the phone company grimly: "We will study cases of other suspected violators ... we will take such action as is necessary to protect our interests."

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